Customer Analysis
Market & Competitor Analysis
Marketing Planning
Product Development
Sales & Territory Management
Selling Strategies & Channel Management

Industrial Marketing, in its broadest sense, is the business activity which allows a company to know what its customers want. It is comprised of critical tasks for better understanding of a firm’s business activities, analysis of the market potential of products and services and how they meet or exceed customer requirements, review and selection of the appropriate medium and message for the potential clients, and development of a system to monitor customer service satisfaction. It lets the firm collect the information needed to design products and services, and to later specify the manufacturing processes and logistics needed to create and deliver those products.

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Customer analysis is the focus area where information about existing customers is collected and analyzed. Every company has some information about its current customers but it frequently is not organized in ways that allow for ready access and use. Key concepts addressed in this focus area include customer databases, most valuable customer analysis, customer satisfaction audits, account list segmentation, market niche identification, customer profiling, quotation tracking systems including bid and quotation analysis, lost order and lost customer analysis, and customer service processes.

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Market and competitor analysis is the focus area where information about the external environment to which the company is subject is collected and analyzed. Market information consists of market size, growth rate, potential, and market share. It includes information on the economic trends that affect the market such as the regulatory environment.

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Marketing planning is where all of the information from customer analysis, market and competitor analysis, product development, sales & territory management, selling strategies & channel management, and advertising and promotion are brought together and put into a form on which the company can take action. The plan can range from a simple one-page pro forma budget that simply describes how a firm is going to spend money on the marketing functions to more complete documents that describe markets and the strategies the firm will use to attack those markets, complete with the operational tasks, responsible individuals, and budgets.

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Most new product failures are the result of either a failure to do or poor execution of the up front marketing homework, not a failure of the technology. This focus area covers the issues surrounding the market homework a company needs to do to support a systematic product development process. Decisions about what products and services (or combinations) that a company will sell are obviously crucial to the business. Key concepts addressed in this focus area include idea evaluation, assessing market feasibility, the business case for a new product, product planning, market launch, product development processes, and product portfolio management.

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Sales and territory management is an essential part of the marketing process. Industrial buyers are different from consumers, especially if the company is selling into a large plant or a multi-division company. For these plants or divisions, the firm must be concerned with selling to buying teams, not individuals. This is also where the responsibilities of the sales manager come into play in the marketing arena - sales forecasting, sales reports, sales call costs, sales call priorities (based on MVC analysis), territory breakeven analysis, territory assignments, and measurement of sales results.

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The selling strategies and channel management focus area concentrates on the methods and strategies for getting the product out. Here is where you will find information on choosing the right distribution channel(s), selecting and evaluating manufacturers' reps and agents, working with distributors (retailers, wholesalers, jobbers, etc.), and dealing with catalog, mail order, and Internet sales channels.